I’m a big fan of Jeremy Robinson so I snatched this up as his last standalone novel I listened to, Alter, was truly spellbinding. This one falls far short of the mastery exhibited in most of Robinson’s work that I’ve experienced to date. The character development lacked Robinson’s usual care. The cast of characters is pretty huge in this story and I believe the amount of time required to develop the deep emotional connections to the characters would have injured the momentum but without that usual connection, I had a hard time truly caring what happened to them. In addition, in the audio format, I had a hard time keeping everyone straight at times.
Because of the complex nature of a time-travel plot, there were many opportunities to indulge in interesting secondary story lines that would have improved the character development and made the good vs. evil battles more interesting. However, since those efforts were foregone, the constant battle against both human and more esoteric enemies almost felt one-dimensional and despite multiple action scenes of the protagonists battling nefarious forces, they all started to feel monotonous and repetitive in a way. Same bad guys, same good guys, same impossible odds, same “skin of the teeth” conclusion to each conflict. Toward the ending, the introduction of new forces in these conflicts became so weirdly esoteric as to be bordering on ludacris even for sci-fi.
The big reveal of the antagonist’s ultimate plan and motivations was honestly a bit baffling. Since his character development was superficial, I had a hard time understanding his motivations. I just felt like I had come so far, I owed it to myself to see how it all ended. To be completely honest, the wrap up and conclusion felt a bit like a rip-off and a bit lazy. Granted, in a time travel book, one agrees to suspend some expectation of realism but the path the author took to wrap up the story was a disappointment to such a complex plot by being overly simple and it felt sophomoric compared to my other experiences with Robinson’s work.
I have no complaints about the narrator.
It pains me to write a “meh” review of an author that has written some of my favorite sci-fi works, but my advice is to skip this one and spend your time with some of Robinson’s better efforts like Infinite or Alter.
If you’re new to Robinson, be warned that he does not shy away from gratuitous descriptions of violence. There is ample violence, brutality, and death in this book so if those things offend you, this definitely isn’t the book for you.